A year after his dismissal, the former director of the Talcahuano Health Directorate spoke about the fraud discovered by the Comptroller’s Office and that today is the subject of an investigation for crimes of fraud to the Treasury and embezzlement of public funds.
Categorically, Armando Domínguez points to the mayor, Henry Campos, as responsible for what happened.
There are two irregularities with borders of crimes that the Comptroller’s Office detected in its investigation: diversion of money by DAS officials to their bank accounts and tenders awarded for direct treatment for works that were never executed. The damage to the Municipality of Talcahuano? Approximately one million dollars.
As a result of the administrative summary, several officials were dismissed, among them the head of the Health Directorate, Armando Domínguez, who for first time he talked about what happened, today in the hands of the Public Ministry for an investigation that has a dozen accused.
The first question to the former director of the DAS was about his responsibility for not having noticed the money transfers from the same distribution computers to private checking accounts.
“I did not realize, even doing budget analysis of the DAS permanently (…) People, unscrupulous officials, stole financial resources, exceeded the control levels of a DAS director, ”he pointed out, adding that he sent more than 70 emails and WhatsApp messages to the community leader, expressing the urgency of solving monetary problems of said estate.
And those requests to the communal chief, mainly for an accounting audit, Domínguez assures that he raised them since he took office in January 2017, when after a diagnosis he detected 1,600 million pesos in debts to supplierss.
According to his version, the Mayor would not have listened to him and that is why the former Health Director points to Henry Campos as responsible, along with the Control Directorate.
“Here the first person in charge is the mayor of Talcahuano, who did not give way to do the audit,” he said.
Domínguez argued that if the DAS finances had been audited, the diversions of money that could have been detected could have been stopped and he believes crawled from the previous administration, something that was also recognized by the Comptroller’s Office, said the former municipal director, who arrived from the Municipality of Los Alamos after the request of the mayor of Talcahuano.
But what the audit would not have revealed or anticipated are the bids for direct treatment that between January 2018 and June 2019 they were awarded to companies owned by close to officials today dismissed, among them Luigi Fregonara; tenders for works that were not even executed.
In this regard, Armando Domínguez said ignore that situation, but ensuring that all the contracted projects were completed.
Before the Talcahuano Prosecutor’s Office, the former director of the DAS has the quality of witness for the deviations of 500 million pesos, while for the irregular tenders -with a loss of 300 million for the municipality- Domínguez is charged, ensuring total innocence on both sides and therefore asking the Concepción Court of Appeals to reverse the dismissal as director of Health of Talcahuano.
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